


A Light in The Dark

by Parasitikos



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:28:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21556276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parasitikos/pseuds/Parasitikos
Summary: Despite being rescued from Ghaul's clutches, The Speaker finds himself plagued with anxiety and fear about it all happening again. Unable to sleep, he calls out to Reliquary-23 for comfort.
Relationships: male guardian/speaker, male guardian/the speaker (destiny)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	A Light in The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> An old work in which Reliquary-23 rescues the Speaker from Ghaul's ship but escapes without a final showdown yet. The Speaker rests at the farm and Reliquary sticks close by.

He couldn't sleep. For the first time in months, The Speaker laid in a bed with the threat of death more distant than it had been since the war started. Despite this presumed safety, restlessness itched at his limbs and left him writhing in bed. Comfort, apparently, was a luxury he was not to have. During his imprisonment under Ghaul he had been forced to hang from his wrists and ankles for months. He'd barely been able to move during Reliquary's rescuing of him, his joints dislocated and muscles stretched too far to be of use. His ghost had been returned to him and he had long since healed, but a deep feeling of incorrectness had settled in his body. It could not come to terms with its condition, with this situation, with being alive and being safe.

He stared up at the broken ceiling of the barn. Suraya had offered to patch up the holes, but The Speaker insisted they stay. His excuse had been for her to use those resources elsewhere and his own comfort was of no consequence. Really, he took immense comfort in the sight of the stars and the cool light of the moon. Much of his time on Ghaul's ship had been spent confined in a pitch black prison cell only barely big enough to hold him with enough air to breathe. To see the sky, to sit in the light of its moons and stars, after so much time in that room— He couldn't find the words to describe how much comfort it gave him. But, with light came shadows and in the dark of the barn, every looming shape made him uneasy and every movement sent his heart racing. He was worried by thoughts of the Red Legion storming the farm, a terrible repeat of the conquest of The City. He was not sure he could bear to see more of his people so brutally executed at the hands of the Legion. The past and the possible future haunted his dreams, from which he consistently woke with a violent start, but thankfully not a shout. His own fear stole his breath, preventing him from making any sound until his body remembered that it still lived contrary to the dreams and remembered how to breathe. Anxiety wracked his nerves and the thought of sleeping became more and more distant. 

"Reliquary." He whispered into his ghost, both worried of waking Reliquary up and desperate to. His ghost bobbed in response, a hum of clicks and chirps, then, just a few seconds later, a worried voice came through him.

"What's wrong?" Once, Reliquary had been very difficult to wake, but now it'd taken only a second and this fact was a fist that gripped and twisted his heart. What else had the war changed about him? Anxiety killed the words in his throat and he gaped silently, trying, struggling to put his racing, spiraling thoughts in order. This was a mistake. Did he even still know Reliquary? He seemed like a different person now. He was always looking somewhere else, even in those scarce times he visited. Somewhere ahead, somewhere back, there was a troubled look in the shadows of his face, but The Speaker couldn't pry him open. He was left worried and alone.

"Speaker?" Reliquary came again, urgent this time, and in the background he could hear him rushing to get himself together.

"I'm fine." He quickly said and there was a pause in the bustle on the other end, then a sigh thick with relief. He felt embarrassed now, but he forced the words out: "I can't sleep."

Another sigh, but still relief. His voice came soft and gentle, a salve on his heart: "Give me a few minutes." Reliquary had taken to helping on the night watch that formed the first line of defense for the farm some miles out. It would take half an hour, at the least. The Speaker listened in silence as Reliquary gathered his things, reported that he was leaving for the night, and then he listened to the soft hum of his sparrow carrying him to the farm as fast as it could.

Reliquary cut his sparrow's engine at the farm's edge and announced himself to the guards, then assured them that everything he was fine, he wasn't here for something personal, not to report something from the perimeter. The Speaker knew he was coming, could hear him as he approached, but he still jumped when he entered the barn. The subsequent tension melted away immediately. "Reliquary." His name came as a whined sigh and he flinched at the sound of his own voice. Where had his dignity gone? His grace and his authority? The bed was tucked into a corner and he'd pressed himself against that corner so as to see as much of the barn as possible, but in it he felt like a cornered animal, scared and broken. 

Reliquary was not slow to act. He climbed into the bed, set his rifle at its foot, but within arms reach, and sat next The Speaker. The Speaker eyed the weapon.

"Would you feel better if you held it?" Reliquary offered and reached for it. The Speaker bent his hands around the invisible shape of the gun, then flexed and clenched them into fists. He shook his head.

"As I am now, you'd be better with it than me." He said, but he was simply too embarrassed and too ashamed of his own fear to take him up on the offer. He scooted closer to Reliquary instead and offered a portion of his blankets to Reliquary. Reliquary thought for a short moment, then rather than accepting the offer, he pulled The Speaker into his lap and held him there with his arms loosely around his waist. He rested his head on his shoulder and The Speaker wondered if he could hear how violently his heart thudded in his chest. Surely he felt his pulse in his neck as he placed a kiss there.

The quiet, which had become a prison to him, a place in which his nightmares ran wild, was not so frightening there with Reliquary. Every sound was so loud. Every crunch of grass and dirt under the boots of guards, workers in the night, and frames, every snort of every animal, the scuttling of rats. The smooth humming of Reliquary's body and its unknown machinery. He knew this sound, had listened to it night after night, and what a relief it was that it was unchanged. He closed his eyes and focused on that sound until it consumed him. Gently, Reliquary hummed comfort into his neck and took his hands in his own. He rubbed his thumbs across the back of his hands and each time the tension was coaxed out of his body. "Are you asleep?" Reliquary whispered, placing a kiss along his jaw, and when he was answered with quiet, steady breathing, he smiled. Carefully he pulled his rifle closer, then he closed his own eyes and slept.


End file.
